The present invention relates to a method for characterizing surfaces. The invention will be described below with reference to the surfaces of car bodies. However, we wish to point out that the invention may also be applied in other fields.
The optical impression of surfaces such as surfaces of car bodies is decisively determined by their qualities such as color, smoothness, gloss, orange peel, distinctness of image (DOI) and the like; wherein particularly the smoothness or roughness of a surface plays a decisive role as to the optical impression it gives.
Therefore a specification of the optical properties of surfaces is called for. Systems for specifying the colors of surfaces have been known in the prior art.
Many different factors determine roughness of surfaces such as the mean deviation from an ideally smooth surface, periodicities of individual deviations and the like. The industrial production of vehicle surfaces or car bodies calls for the possibility of explicitly characterizing or classifying any occurring roughness or the optical impression caused by such roughness.